Jaral is a boy, or a young man. About twelve or thirteen, however many that would be in dinosaur years. He lives with the godfather, a man of magic, and that’s about all he does apart from learning various incantations that he can use to prank people he doesn’t much like. And his friends. He pranks them too.

Then one strange evening, several strangers appear in his town and uncover a magical sword which, according to reliable claims, will make anyone who touches it lose their mind. Just ask the knight who finds it, as he seems to be stark raving mad, though he was find when we first met him.

This is the Sickle Claw. A powerful sword that can slay anything, alive, dead or even immortal. Or perhaps the Sickle Claw is the mysterious man who finds it before going mad, or could it be the ravenous deinonychus that he rights the countryside on? According to an ancient prophecy, for no adventure with a cursed sword can be complete without a thoroughly perplexing prophecy, the Sickle Claw will be showing up soon, and with him a host of troubles. Long lost faery queens. Armies of the dead returned from the grave. Dæmons.

Our young lad Jaral, along with his friend Evran from the manor house, and a girl named Lara, who has a pet leptoceratops, will soon be unraveling the prophecy, the sword, the knight, and more. For there is more—secrets, suspicious, love potions, and even an unfortunate man cursed to turn into a velociraptor every night and terrify the countryside.

A simple story of fantasy and adventure that happens to take place at the close of the Cretaceous era, had the Cretaceous era never closed, and continued in Ammonite Key: A Tale of Mystery and Romance in the Age of the Dinosaurs.

I has taken me a surprising ten years to finally call this novel finished. Really, to be technical, the idea first occurred to me when I was about ten years old, so it might really be much longer that I’ve been shaping and reshaping this story.

The largest delay, however, was that it was my first novel. I had to learn how to write in order to write this. I knew I lacked the skill, the insight, the whatever it takes to write something truly worth reading. I began with corny little short stories, which I never had any intention of publishing (or allowing anyone other than a couple of very close friends read). Looking back now, they were horrendous, but they were necessary. It’s said that every artist has a thousand bad drawings in them, so it’s best to get them out as quickly as possible. The same is true with writers, that we have a thousand bad stories in there, but fortunately they tend to be among the first.

And even then, after a decent first draft of all three of these novels, I knew they were nowhere near good enough, which meant I had to rewrite them all three from the beginning. At that time, I intended to get them published the old fashioned way, which meant desperately trying to sell lots of boring little stories to various publications, in the hope of catching the eye of an agent, who would then try to catch the eye of a publishing company. It was as bleak an outlook as one could hope for, as the quality of the writing or merit of the book itself rarely had anything to do with its success.

Then, almost overnight, that all went away. Those publishers and agents I so desperately sought to please all went out of business, or so it seemed. Amazon opened like some vast uncharted water, with me in tiny boat made of one reasonably good novel. Still, I don’t regret they new world we write and read in, though I am still just embarking on this strange trip down the river Amazon.